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November 11, 2016

Nov. 23, 2016

Read Read the nearly 200 of my Daily Kos articlesor don’t.Some of my photosWeds. Nov. 23, 2016=====What about Nikki Haley as the Cabinet level* position of Ambassador to the United Nations?Whoop-de-do... she's a female Asian-American of Indian descent with some progressive views on immigration, and a degree in accounting from Clemson -- how do you spell token? Her appoinment is the least of our problems -- besides Trump probably doesn't give the United Nations any thought unless he begrudes the fact that we pay 1/4 of their bills, and that Congress saw fit to make their priceless NYC waterfront property an international zone. Read more.* Not an actual member of the Cabinet++++++++Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2016Evening Edition: Some random, mildly profound, thoughts, some snarky, some not. Don’t forget, you can always comment, and read comments over at Daily Kos here.

On reading how conservatives are outraged that Trump won’t trying to send Hillary to prison and how they’re worried he won’t keep other campaign promises:

Trump probably doesn’t care. In fact, I’m pretty sure he cares more about a strand of his hair being out of place than he cares about the hysterical reaction of the likes of the chattering blowhards that think he owes something to them.. This is big stuff to the far right, which shows how petty, vicious, and pea-brained they are. He doesn’t give half a hoot about what the likes of Steve Deace thinks:

“Trump is a blank slate ideologically. And can only be counted on to do what is best for Trump in any given situation like the Machiavellian he is,” conservative radio host Steve Deace said, warning that “his time in office will rise and fall by the conservatives who got him there getting him to deliver on his promises.”

“They now have a seat at the table, and he wouldn't be there without them, so they must get him to deliver the way George W. Bush never did,” he continued, giving Trump credit for purging New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, his allies and lobbyists from the transition team. “But just because we're happy the Marxists are gone doesn't mean Trump suddenly had a character transplant. Conservatives will need to be diligent.” Conservatives put Trump on Notice, Politico

Now, on Trump’s horrible business related conflicts of interest, his having his kids get security clearance and participate in diplomatic meetings: I consider this the small stuff, I don’t EFFING care about the small stuff, even about the conflicts of interest the talking heads on MSNBC are going ballistic over as I type this.

The big stuff, I mean the gargantuan stuff, is his authoritarian personality, and what he will allow his appointees to do. Masha Gessen, the Russian author of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, was interviewed by Joy Reid (subbing for Rachel). She explained chilling similarities between Putin and Trump. One thing that we need to remind ourselves is of the power of the presidency and not lull ourselves into a false sense of security because we believe that our institutions will protect us from Tumpism.

​In a New York Review of Books article published before the election, Gessen offers a sobering analysis:

Trump is also like Mussolini and Hitler. All of them are fascist demagogues who emerged from their own cultures and catered to them. In fact, Trump is less like Putin, whose charisma is largely a function of the post to which he was accidentally appointed, than he is Mussolini or Hitler.

In the middle of the last century, a number of thinkers whose imaginations had been trained in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany tried to tell Americans that it can happen here. In such different books as Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, Theodor Adorno and his group’s The Authoritarian Personality, and Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, the great European exiles warned that modern capitalist society creates the preconditions for the rise of fascism. America doesn’t need Putin for that. The Trump-Putin Fallacy.

Forget — well never forget — who these likely appointees are and how they will set back the progress made over eight year in the various areas their purviews oversee.

When the least of the changes we can expect with Jess Sessions is to marijuana legalization in the various states that now legalized either medical or recreational/medical marijuana, you know we are in trouble.

Move from there to the attack on Planned Parenthood and women’s right to choose, and we still only have moved up a notch on the scale of losing our rights.

Some thoughts on the campaign promises the Trump supporters expect Trump to keep.

Trump redefined the word “promise.” Of course his supporters didn’t know it. The conservatives are outraged he’s not going to prosecute Hillary because he promised to do so. But remember there are two meanings of “promise.” One is the English definition. And the other is the Trumplish definition, or as defined in Trumpspeak. It means whatever gets hoots and hollers of approval from his crowds.

Hell, he doesn’t even want to make America great again. If anyone wants to believe that they probably also believes he wants to bring jobs back to the rust belt and solve the immigration problem.

When he said he was going to spend a trillion dollars — a humongous amount for Trump — I’m sure he envisioned getting credit for this even if he could brand the projects with his name like state governors often do. He may think a trillion bucks is a lot, but I am hearing experts ay that to actually rebuild our infrastructure to 21st century standards it would cost $3 trillion.

Of course he will learn the hard way that we can’t rebuild the nuts and bolts of the nation without raising taxes on the upper class. (see recommended article below)

He said what he needed to say to get elected because that started out as a lark, as more fun than a barrel of grabable women became serious when by pure luck he resonated with just the right number of voters to win the electoral college.

Now he’s in his glory because he’s president, he showed the the crooked media, the mocking media who made him into a cartoon.

A bit of snark (but if it comes true I’ll take credit for predicting it)

Being president will wear thin when he realizes that the fun times are over. He’ll discover he can’t have Air Force One jet him all over the country to hold his rallies just about every day. He’ll have to content himself just with Tweeting, and that will get old.

Being as thin skinned as he is, he’ll discover that the best way not to get mocked by Alex Baldwin and find that Saturday Night Live’s rating are soaring as his plummet, is not to do anything.

So he’ll get back to what he knows best, which is to run his business empire and make more money and put his name in giant gold letters all over the world. Who cares if all those branded buildings are terrorist targets, the foreign countries will have to protect them because, after all, they can’t allow lives to be put at risk. And I wouldn’t want to bet against him opening a few new casinos in Mosul once ISIS is defeated there. Oh, and lest I forget, there’s no law against the president hosting a reality show.

If you missed it, Obama awarding 21 Medals of Freedom was inspiring. Talk about graciously sharing the spotlight. Unlike Trump who today it was reported demoted Christie because he hogged the spotlight. It brought tears to my eyes, and to many of the recipient’s eyes too. Slideshow here.

By now countless journalists, academics, and luminaries have expressed serious concern over the election of Donald Trump. To put it simply, the only ones celebrating his victory are the KKK, Russia, ISIS, and American conservatives.

This fact alone should disturb anyone who voted for him, but the magnitude of this election, and its inevitable repercussions, are not registering with the populace.

It’s not because a political party who has campaigned for half a century on family values compromised them all by supporting Trump.

Trump’s election to the presidency is tragic because it marks a turning point in world politics. November 8, 2016 is the day that proved Americans could no longer differentiate between fact and fiction. Continued

This is a long well crafted article. I admire the work he put into it. I don’t have the patience for that kind of writing.

I react to reading the best articles written for the progressive websites by wondering who their audience is. They essentially are writing for an audience largely consisting of people who are also in agreement. The other readers, at least those who comment, are far right trolls.

At least when Bernie and Hillary were competing in the primaries the arguments presented on the liberal websites like Daily Kos may have swayed some opinions. Here on Kos the Democratic primary sure provide some spirited debate, to put it mildly.

Since I can only stand to watch MSNBC I don’t know what the Fox-washed minds are hearing over at “Fair and Balanced.” If I was really dedicated to my foray into amateur political science I’d looked up the channel Fox News is broadcast on and watch it regularly. I found it for some of the debates but repressed the number on the Portland XFinity list.

Spitale writes: “for those who think people are overreacting, for those who think Trump can improve this country, and for those who think this is merely a political disagreement: this is for you.”

The problem is that the “for you” people won’t read his article. The only way I can see to get our viewpoints, our warnings, out to the people who voted for Trump, is to be on Fox News. The only way this can happen is for things to get so bad that Fox has to report them.

We can describe the election of Trump and impending Trumpist administration bolstered by a the Republican Congress is a national tragedy, but it’s worse. It will be a worldwide crisis. Consider how Spitale ends his article:

We lost when you refused to see Fox News as a modern-day equivalent to Nazi propaganda, indoctrinating a public into voting against its self-interest.

“Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

The greatest problem of our future is not political; it is not economic; it is not even rational. It’s the battle of fact versus fiction.

Sadly, a Trump victory illustrates that we are no longer able to distinguish between the two.

I have to admit I found this on Breitbart. I don’t know if it was photoshopped. I do know the hats are for sale on Zazzle.I would call it a cluster fuck for the world (although I admit I wondered whether I should use military slang and call it a Charlie Foxtrot when I wrote this for Daily Kos…. I guess you have the answer).

So what do we do? Those of us who publish stories on Daily Kos already are writing, although this is usually personal venting and brainstorming with people who agree with each other. It is important. We also suggest courses of action and report on the resistance movement across the country. For example, here’s the latest news from the Portland (Oregon) resistance: www.kgw.com/…

We fight in large and small ways. Yesterday in the supermarket I complemented an elderly lady for her baseball cap with the logo “Make Congress Blue Again” and explained why I was wearing a safety pin.

Monday, Nov. 21, 2016

Add caption

A painting by Norman Rockwell was moved in the Oval Office for the first meeting between President Obama and Mr. Trump so it would hang over Mr. Trump’s shoulder. In the painting the torch of the Statue of Liberty is being repaired by five men, one of whom is an African-American. All of them are precariously roped to her flame.
Who moved the painting and why? It is clearly too small for that space; a larger landscape painting had hung there previously. Originally the Rockwell painting was displayed to the right of President Obama’s desk and the expansive window, over a Frederick Remington sculpture, The Bronco Buster.
What is the meaning of this gesture? Most of my grandfather Norman Rockwell’s paintings are about tolerance, unity and the inherent goodness and resilience of the human spirit. The reflection of that vision and the profound presence of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the bust below, by African-American sculptor Charles Alston, speak volumes without saying a word. Perhaps they are able to say what Obama could not in these circumstances of necessary protocol. from Huffington Post

“Off-the-record” is bullshit. Journalists worth their salt should have refused an off-the-record meeting with the president. In fact, this is appalling! Appalling…. despicable… more of the Charlie Foxtrot. onlineslangdictionary.com/…

I wake up every morning and often find an idea for a story within the first few minutes on MSNBC —

Today it was about how Trump is using stagecraft to roll out potential members of his administration.

I have to note that it’s cheesy stagecraft at best.

This has never happened before… consider how he’s at this mansion he owns on his country club property and each candidate has a photo op with Trump as he greets him at the door.

Smile for the camera. Otherwise shut up.

It’s like a damn reality show. Only unlike reality shows, this is as real as it gets. It’s like “Survivor” when the losing team actually dies.

Forget — well never forget — who these “potentials” are and how they will set back the progress made over eight year in the various areas their purviews oversee.

When the least of the changes we can expect with Jess Sessions is to marijuana legalization in the various states that now legalized either medical or recreational/medical marijuana, you know we are in trouble.

Move from there the attack on Planned Parenthood and women’s right to choose, and we still only have moved up a notch on the scale of losing our rights.

Then we get serious.

We can expect draconian changes to consumer protection, environmental policy, immigration policy, freedom of press, Wall Street reform, and international cooperation and leadership with our allies.

And all this starts now with a preview one expects at an old fashioned carnival sideshow.

I’ve written nearly 200 serious, snarky, or silly stories since I started posting here and on Daily Kos in March. During that time I never thought Donald Trump could be elected. As one of a comparatively small number psychotherapists writing here I wrote about 20 articles about why Trump was psychologically unfit even dangerous, to be president. Now he’s proving me right.

A few days after the election I reacted to Trump’s still Tweeting with the story at left.

I wrote then:

After watching my usual MSNBC shows while at the same time reading dozens of articles on progressive websites I’ve had these thoughts.

Starting out with Chris Mathews I saw him talk about what a good meeting Trump had with President Obama.

Boy, was he taken in, hook, line, and sinker.

By the time Lawrence O’Donnell came on the two Tweets coming minutes apart were posted by Trump. Thankfully, the contrast between the two didn’t go unnoticed.

What got to me the most was that any fleeting personal delusional normalization of Trump, any fleeting hopeful thought I had about Trump, was extinguished with his Tweets. Trust me, I never really believe he could become presidential.

Of course now he’s showing this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde aspect of his personality again, Tweeting about Hamilton at 3:00 AM. This isn’t a metaphor. This is deviant and dangerous behavior for a person who will be president.

You can bet that the best psychologists the national security agencies in Russia, China, and even allies like Israel, France, Britain, and Germany log onto his Twitter account. The CIA does this with their leader, and obviously they do it with ours.

I am certain these experts have compiled reams of material on Hillary Clinton. They are most likely playing a desperate game of catch-up on Trump. Who knows, they may be reading some of the psychological profiles I’ve written on Daily Kos. The would be well advised to read Israeli clinical psychologist Avner Falk’s penetrating, dare I say brilliant, analysis “Dr. Donald and Mr. Trump.”

Here’s an excerpt:

How can we square the magnanimous Dr. Donald with the mean and evil Mr. Trump? Well, the Jekyll-and-Hyde personality is familiar to psychological professionals. It is based upon what psychoanalysts call an unconscious “splitting of the self.” This kind of splitting develops early in one’s life, as a psychic defense, when the child cannot reconcile the “good” or pleasurable and “bad” or painful parts of himself. It usually goes along with an inner “object splitting,” when the child cannot reconcile the “good” and “bad” parts of its primary emotional “object,” usually the mother, upon which his very life depends.

The “splitting of the self” was given literary expression in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, while “object splitting” is given concrete expression in fairy tales, such as that of Snow White, whose protagonist has two mothers, one all good, but dead, the other all bad, cold, narcissistic, who keeps looking at her own image in the mirror. When this unconscious splitting persists into one’s adult life, the Jekyll-and-Hyde personality develops. Indeed, Donald Trump sees his world in split-up, black-and-white terms: to him, there are “very good people” and there are “very bad people” who must be denied entry, deported or killed. In reality, most people are both good and bad.

This man is dangerous. Not only is he personally not in control of his darker impulses, but his choices of advisers and appointments to his administration shows a disregard for both the beliefs and competence of those who will be running the government.

It’s understandable that he should value loyalty, but he shows every sign of wanting to surround himself with subordinates who are obsequious. Not only that, he has adopted far right positions for sheer political gain that he most likely doesn’t believe. He says things for shock value just for the pleasure of it. For example, I rather doubt he thinks women should be punished for having abortions, or that we should open the can of worms that trying to legalize waterboarding would cause.

If you add all the personality factors to the indisputable fact that he has almost no knowledge about how government works, and then factor in the fact that he has demonstrated a lack of intellectual curiosity, that he has a short attention span, plus if you believe only half of the reports that he tends to decide on a course of action based on the advice of the last person he talked to — you know where I am going with this as we gauge how high on the Charlie Foxtrot Richter Scale the catastrophe will be.

I don’t want to appear facile. This is as serious as it gets. But the old phraseology isn’t adequate for describing the course Trump has set this nation on. We are as imperiled now as the world was when Hitler came to power.

Addendum:

Earthquakes of a magnitude over nine occur every 10-50 years. Consider how the U.S. Geological Survey defines earthquakes over over 10.

Minor earthquakes occur every day and hour. On the other hand, great earthquakes occur once a year, on average. The largest recorded earthquake was the Great Chilean earthquake of May 22, 1960, which had a magnitude of 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale.[19] The larger the magnitude, the less frequent the earthquake happens.

Beyond 9.5, while extremely strong earthquakes are theoretically possible, the energies involved rapidly make such earthquakes on Earth effectively impossible without an extremely destructive source of external energy. For example, the asteroid impact that created the Chicxulub crater and caused the mass extinction that may have killed the dinosaurs has been estimated as causing a magnitude 13 earthquake (see below), while a magnitude 15 earthquake could destroy the Earth completely. Seismologist Susan Hough has suggested that 10 may represent a very approximate upper limit, as the effect if the largest known continuous belt of faults ruptured together (along the Pacific coast of the Americas)

The president to be of the United States is up at 3:22 AM, not dealing with the affairs of state, but seething about being insulted and venting his spleen by Tweeting not only to the country, but to the world.

Me this morning is our coffee shop. Everyone, well two people, asked me what it meant. I said to Google it, and got the fish eye, but all I had to do was say that Charlie meant cluster… of course we have other military slang like FUBAR and SNAFU, and the less know TARFU, SUSFU, and BOHICA.

I am watching Joy Reed this morning show this morning, with the white supremacists enthusiastically rallying, and a woman calling out a black MSNBC interviewer and calling him “boy.” Like all of us we find the usual words of polite discourse don’t suffice to describe what Trump has unleashed, and is unleashing, across the country.

Over-used profanity, swear words, obscenity, and even words most of us who write here struggle to find words in the thesaurus usually cease to have any impact when used repeatedly. Even phrases which once were an effective relying cry, think “make America great again” and “lock her up,” become passé in time.

Do we need to expand our online publishing vocabulary, ignoring good manners, and spell out cluster fuck, or do we stick — as Michelle implored — with going high when they go low?

Here’s a reason for understanding why some members of the audience of “Hamilton” booed Mike Pence. Broadway theater goers are by and large New Yorkers who are very much aware that without the LGBT community silence would descend on Broadway. They know how hard the AIDS epidemic hit the theater world. They also know that Mike Pence is a gay hater who advocated for conversion therapy. What's worse, Pence wanted to deny federal funding for AIDS treatment.

When Pence ran for Congress in 2000 his positions were decidedly anti-gay. I doubt those in the audience were familiar with just how much of a retrograde bigot he was. However by now his actions as governor of Indiana are well known, especially his forcing women to have funerals for miscarriages.

He wanted to end the use of the military for humanitarian purposes, to no longer let men and women train together, and especially odious, to forbid homosexuals from serving in the military. To quote his position paper: “Homosexuality is incompatible with military service because the presence of homosexuals in the ranks weakens unit cohesion.”

Pence must be incredibly out of touch to walk into a Broadway show and not be prepared for a negative reaction. It’s Broadway, for blanks sake! No doubt are goodly portion of the audience was LGB or T. In addition, the show’s star,Javier Muñoz, is HIV positive.

The cast response and the speech (written by the show’s writer, director, and producer) and delivered by Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays Aaron Burr, was gracious:

“We welcome you, and we truly thank you for joining us here at Hamilton: An American Musical—we really do. We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values, and work on behalf of all of us. We truly thank you for sharing this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men and women of different colors, creeds and orientations."

I know people who have been writing and saying that booing Pence was rude. But I would hope they understand that at least some of those who did express their disgust in such an overt way may have felt they were giving him his just deserts. They may have felt it was an affront to their sensibilities for him even to come to the show, almost as if he had visited a performance of Bette Midler at a gay bar.

Perhaps they wanted to let him know that had he had his way about treating HIV and AIDS some of those who created the play might not have been alive today.

Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016

Sick above to comment on Daily Kos

Lots of cartoons before the election depicted how Trump would decorate the White House. Many of us speculated that the White House would not only be way too small for him and his plastic creepy family; but there would be too many rules against ripping out walls to put in escalators and cathedral ceilings, and hanging crystal chandeliers. Now that Trump has to live there, a place he sees as downscale as Navin R. Johnson’s sharecropper house (right), he also wants to live at Trump Plaza.

Those with a psychological bent and real psychotherapists like me wrote about his malignant narcissism, his vanity, and his hedonism. Hell, if not for other factors I’d reluctantly accept even his misogyny and pussy grabbing. If that was all that was wrong with him and he wasn’t a demagogue, authoritarian personality, know-it-all, and enabler of white supremacists I could put-up with his personality disorders and character flaws.

However with Trump you get the whole package. His psychopathology, including his dangerous quick trigger temper combine with his lack of values. The narcissist’s lack of empathy combine with his couldn’t care less attitude about who he hurts.

His wife jokingly compared dealing with her son and husband as coping with two adolescents. When I hear commentators talking about Romney being Secretary of State and saying “the more adults in the room the better” I realize that Melania’s comment was a portentous warning.

Now we have Trump without a doubt being told by the Secret Service and perhaps the NYPD (at least on television) that it is absolutely unsafe for him to spend time in Trump Tower when he’s president.

It is insane that Trump is spending ay time at all in Trump Tower. The reasons are obvious to anyone that’s seen a few spy movies. It isn’t a joke. The Secret Service doesn’t make jokes. Their job is not just to protect a person, it is to protect our democracy.

My fear is that Trump with his misplaced but deeply help machismo sense of self will be the most difficult president to protect in modern times. And protect him we must.

The t-shirt at left, I would venture an educated guess, met with Trump’s approval. Somebody from the Secret Service needs to sit him down and say “Mr. President, welcome to the bubble. You have chosen to live in this the rest of your life.”

Meanwhile, back to the start of this story, none of the old jokes about the clownish Trump are the least bit amusing anymore.

I thought the NY Daily News was masterful in getting this front pages out on the streets by 3:00AM after breaking new. Now I shudder when I think that there was now way this clown could become president.

He will be President Trump and his family and loyalists will be running the country. Only Congress can restrain Trump and his team from following through on the authoritarian, and (to say the hell with Godwin’s Law), downright Hitlerian campaign promises.

Friday, Nov. 18, 2016Do we really need a Kent State moment?

If only we could pass a national presidential recall lemon law like those most states now have for certain consumer goods, including cars, it would read like this.

The National Presidential Lemon Law (NPLL) provides a remedy for voters who elected a president who in the judgement of a 2/3rds majority of the voters fails to meet the standards of quality and performance and is in their judgment taking the country on a dangerous course domestically and/or internationally: for example but not limited to denying civil liberties, subverting rights guaranteed in the Constitution, engaging in reckless military adventures, and diminishing our stature in the international community.

Put another way, the NPLL provides an alternative mechanism to impeachment to remove a president but it is not necessarily based on having to prove him unfit through articles of impeachment for Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors voted on by the House of Representatives, and tried and convicted in the U.S. Senate.

Although there may be presidents who disappoint, "lemon" is thought of as applying to presidents who may have misrepresented themselves during the campaign with significant lies and distortions, and with promises they couldn’t keep, and/or those who prove at some time during their tenure to be incompetent or lacking the mental stability to function in office.

Unlike the grounds for impeachment, the NPLL is meant to rely on the common wisdom of the people about whether the president is able to lead the country in accordance with the values of democracy set forth in the (amended) Constitution, the laws, and the customs of the land.

Thus with this law there are two ways to oust a president. One is the usual process of impeachment when he or she is accused and found guilty of high crimes or misdemeanors. The other, covered by the NPLL is by a 2/3rd majority popular national vote when that president is deemed to be a “lemon.”

In order to be declared a lemon a president and removed from office first 60% of the states must petition their state legislature to hold a statewide election. If the ballot measure passes by a simple majority in 60% of the states, over 50%, that is considered a vote for moving to a national election.

Once 60% of the states have passed such measures, within six months a national election must be held.

The same percentage requiring a 2/3rd for removing a president through impeachment holds for removing him through the national popular vote.

Unlike the national presidential election where a candidate can win the popular vote and loss the electoral college vote and thus the election, the higher standard of 2/3rds majority prevents a disgruntled group of voters from ending the results of a legal election.

The NPLL is meant to be an arduous process, even more difficult to be initiated than the impeachment process.

When the votes are certified within one week the president must vacate the office. At that time the vice president assumes the office of president.

THURSDAY, NOV. 17, 2016Afternoon edition:

Why not do what the Republicans did…. let it leak out that the Democrats, minority that they are in, will use every parliamentary means they can to block and obstruct everything the Republicans try to get through Congress. Many of us don’t care how this appears. Then if or when there is something they can justifiably comprise on they should do so. I do not think there is any benefit to saying they are willing to comprise with Trump at this point. If the Republicans could treat Obama as if he was not a legitimate president, then the Democrats can do the same with Trump. The Electoral College notwithstanding, Trump won on a series of egregious lies. If you buy a used car with sand in the transmission, you have recourse under the Lemon Law. Aside from the voters who voted happily for the racist, sexist, xenophobic Trump, the rest voted for someone based on the lies about Hillary and the many lies about how only he could accomplish a bunch of “Make America Great” slogans.

Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016A registry for legal Muslim immigrants should be a wake-up call if he initiates it! It’s not only the racist and xenophobic demagogic things Trump can legally mandate, including how far he wants to push the pro-life agenda; but the empowerment of the white supremacists to take violent action.We no longer should call these people by the sanitized term alt-right.

These photos separate on day from another.

Weds. Nov. 16, 2017

Click above or scroll down for story.

I feel fully engaged. My shell shock at his win and avoidance lasted a few hours after he was declared the winner, and I was asleep during that time. Then I woke up at 3:00 AM and couldn’t resisted turning on MSNBC. Now I wake up every morning, turn on the TV and read the liberal websites. It gets crazier and crazier and the news coverage at least on the liberal MSNBC (of Bannon and Guliani, the amateurishness of the transition team, the Republican Trump apologists — ) depicts nothing but chaos and turmoil. I have to say that as bad as this seems for the country, it vindicates us. It also leave running the government to careerists who have run the nuts and bolts of the government through several administrations. My fear is once their new appointed bosses take over they will resign. That’s when the trains stop running on time.As I sometime do, last night I woke at around 2:00 AM and the skeleton of a story came to me based on all the Trump surrogates infuriatingly spouting bullshit about how the Bannon they know couldn’t be the racist anti-Semitic champion of the alt-right because the Bannon who they work closely with was a Navy veteran, Harvard MBA, movie producer, and generally a hail fellow well met.Here’s the story I came up with as I sat in our Waterfalls Cafe coffee shop. All the facts in it are true — and fascinating and were unknown to me when I started the story — except that Leonard Goldbaum never existed.

I’m a Jew. In 1939 I was hired by Adolf Hitler to be his dog “ psychologist. “ As an animal behavior specialist of some renown, despite the fact that I was Jewish, I was hired to work in the little known “Woofan SS” experiment (reference).

In the 1920’s I became on of many new researchers in the field on animal psychology. We believed dogs were in many ways comparable in intelligence with humans and could be taught to understand and communicate with us.

When the Nazi Party gained control they recruited us to continue our work under state supervision because they believed in the bond between humans and nature.

Hitler was a dog lover who lavished attention on his German Shepherds Blondi and Bella. He believe dogs could be taught to communicate effectively with humans and be used even more effectively in wartime.

We were having some amazing success in the “Woofan SS experiment (see link) and I was instrumental in teaching a German pointer name Don to back out “Hungry! Give me cake!”

I am deeply ashamed to say that I ignored rumors that some of our most intelligent dogs were confiscated from Jews who I later learned were sent to be murdered in the death camps.

When the Fuhrer learned of the breakthroughs we were having he asked our director to send him his best animal psychologist to work with Blondi and Bondi. When told I was Jewish he said that didn’t matter as long as this information was kept secret.I first meet Hitler and his dogs in his apartment above the Reich Chancellery. The dogs took to me immediately. I dread to think what would have happened if they hadn’t. Blondi and Bondi frolicked on the floor with me much to Hitler’s amusement.I told him that we’d need to work gradually to establish rapport before serious training could begin. He was impatient but understood when I told him that this had to be a gradual process, which was true. By reputation I knew that one did not try to deceive Hitler, but when in his presence you knew that his penetrating gaze was nothing less than a foolproof lie detector.I typically visited the dogs once a week. Hitler made every effort to be there with us and on occasion rescheduled out appointments so he could participate in the training since it was crucial that he be able to communicate with Blondi and Bondi as well or better than I could.One day have a good training session with the dogs I admired a beautifully carved chess set on a side table. Hitler asked me if I played chess and I told him I did, but was hardly a chess master. His eyes lit up and he told me about the time he was only 20 and he played chess with Lenin who was 40 at the time. He told me he beat him. He pointed to a picture on the wall which I’d noted before but had thought nothing of. He said that it was an etching made by his art teacher Emma Lowenstramm, a Jew, who witnessed the game (reference). I was taken aback that there was no sense of prejudice when he casually noted that she was Jewish.As the war took up more and more of his attention he had less time for our training sessions. The dogs had made progress. They had learned at least 100 command words, nothing more than tricks, but Hitler was delighted. To some extent they could communicate their wishes. Ranked against the dogs in our program they would be mid-range in talent. As far as our chess games went I was clearly the lesser player. I did win from time to time and Hitler was very gracious. The rumors that if you played chess with Hitler you’d better allow him to win were unfounded. For one thing, he was a good enough player to know if you missed an obvious move. For another, he enjoyed the challenge of playing against someone of near, if not equally, as talented as he was.After the war of course I learned about what the Israeli Declaration of Independence calls the extermination of six millions Jews the Nazi holocaust,* I discovered once the camps were liberated that the Nazis systematically murdered my brethren and almost all my extended family.My wife died a natural death in 1943. I managed to escape from Germany to Switzerland and then made my way to England with the help of an SS Colonel and fellow animal psychologist from the SS unit where worked. I feel we are lucky we had no children. As I write this I feel relieved that I too am terminally ill. I no longer want to live. I know that it is cowardly to want to escape my guilt. But so be it. I will die knowing that I am one of the few people who was as close to being a friend to Hitler as anyone could have been.By Hal Brown, 2016Authors note: The word holocaust only appears once in the Israeli Declaration of Independence where it is not capitalized.

The photos like this are used as day-spaces instead of horizontal lines. All were taken by me.

Speaking of trains, many homeless people like this sleep in from of Union
Station in Washington.

Despite the look on his face in the photo, don’t rest easy if you think the third in line to the presidency has been really been giving the slouching Trump more than fleeting pause.

from Ryan’s workout shoot with Time: www.huffingtonpost.com/…He be may showing a momentary flash of uneasiness actually being next to someone physically much more imposing, who also knows infinitely more about governing than he does.

Hell, Ryan knows more about governing than Trump’s entire team except for Pence, creepizod Tea Partier, and way out there Christian conservative that he is.

Unfortunately, once out of Ryan’s presence Trump will try to assert the power of the presidency and show that despite his small hands, and Ryans YUUUGE hands and imposing biceps, he is the big enchilada.

Ryan will be the biggest check on Trump’s most dangerous exclusions into Bannon-land. He will be able to develop working relationships with sensible Republicans and with Democrats. I can see him sitting down with Chuck “Take No Prisoners” Schumer and hammering out deals to avoid Trump’s taking the country into total Aramageddon lava from the sky level chaos. There will however be Perfect Storm chaos at home and abroad because of Trump.

This morning’s story: www.dailykos.com/…Meanwhile, back to the photo: Pence has what can only be called a shit-eating grin on his face.

I really believe he knows it is only a matter of time before the wreckage of the demolition derby I described this morning (see picture) will need someone who knows how to run a government to order in the tow trucks.

Prence is likely to have a hard time with the egotistical and privileged personalities involved in Trump’s inner circle; but I expect he will secretly develop alliances in the Senate with both Republicans and Democrats.

At least Pence won’t be in a position to force pregnant woman who have miscarriages to provide funerals for the discharged fetal tissue like he did in Indiana.

Here’s another interesting picture (to me at least). McConnell, Donald, and Melania all seem to be looking in the same direction. What is Melania thinking?

\

Make no mistake, the transition portends what his administration will be… I’ve been to a county fair demolition derby. Incredible noise, but rarely is anyone seriously injured because there’s no room for the cars to go very fast on the dirt or mud. At least in these events the drivers have some basic — if minimal — skill.

… 9-11, Pearl Harbor, what if the south won the Civil War, this country has just gone to shit worse than mere words can describe. As if it isn’t bad enough that it will be amateur hour the White House, the cast of characters will include genuinely evil people.

As I read and hear about the possible choices to head up departments words like “chilling” don’t convey how bad, how utterly dangerous, it will be.

Clare Lopez, reportedly on the short list for an advisory position in the White House, thinks Muslims are infiltrating the government.

Praise for Reince Priebus is another sign of how we’re lowering the bar for Trump

Priebus has no experience in government. Even then his supposed level-headedness assumes he’ll have any influence moderating Bannon’s extremism. Andy Card was an experienced choice for Bush's Chief of Staff, but don’t forget who had the most influence: Karl Rove.

Guiliani is barely containing his gloating when asked if he’s going to be Secretary of State? Obama is in Greece and supposedly will try to convince NATO countries not to worry….
This is from Politco: Trump’s first ambassador: Barack Obama

On his last foreign trip as president, the task ahead of Obama is enormous: Reassuring the world about a successor he said couldn’t possibly win. You remember how you felt with Henry Kissinger and Condi Rice… now compare them to Rudy Fucken Guiliani?

What job will retired Lt. General Michael Flynn have? Will lunatic Milwaukee county sheriff David Clarke actually end up heading the 230,000 employee Homeland Security Department. If Comey ends up out, how about Joe Arpaio to head up the FBI?” We are in for it. The world is in for it. Chaos and madness had started.

Monday, Nov. 14, 2016Bedtime note after watching Lawrence O’Donnell:What a choice (apparently) between war monger maniac, Jack D. Ripper Bolton and Rudy Guiliani as Secretary of State. The former knows something about foreign policy having been ambassador to the U.N. but would make the rest of the world even more terrified of the United States than they already are with Trump. Rudy was a prosecutor and NYC mayor and the city didn’t fall apart, although he is an evil, soulless person. He’s the saner choice between the two but he knows nothing about foreign policy…. oh great…. and Obama is on his way to reassure Angela Merkel that Trump isn’t about to bring chaos and crisis to the world. Now with that reassuring note I am going to bed.This is the message I posted on the PDX Resistance Facebook page:This picture (above right) is my Michigan State University ID… back then I was you and you were me. Now I want to feel like I can be a part of stopping the unfolding destruction we as a country have embarked on if only by supporting you and writing articles on Daily Kos.The early 1970’s was another time where being part of a movement where, no matter the odds against us, we felt we had to do whatever we could to win.When May of 1970 rolled around with the Vietnam War raging on and our friends dying, with Kent State Massacre being the catalyst, like all my friends I was ready to take a more active role in the battle so I became a student activist. Along with millions of others of my generation we took on the government and against tremendous odds we won. Finally the United States pulled out; but not before more than 58,000 Americans died, and estimates of total deaths go up to nearly 4 million.Now it is up to you, but know that those of my generation, and the even older generation who fought for civil rights, are 100% behind you. When you look at us try not to see white haired and wrinkled geezers but remember what we looked like back in our day. You will be senior citizens someday too, and look back at the fight against Trumpism, a fight that you will suffer many setbacks in, but eventually you too will win.

I just heard this from THOM HARTMAN on Progressive radio. He said he does question the legitimacy of President Trump, reminding us that Trump questioned, really disputed, the legitimacy of President Obama for almost eight years. Trump accused the president of fraud.

Now I accuse Trump of a different kind of fraud, and not the comparatively minor fraud of Trump University.

He committed a fraud by taking in many of his zealous supporters with lie after lie after lie, starting on day one of his campaign with his claiming most Mexican illegal immigrants were rapists and murderers.

He said they should elect him based on a fabric of lies.

How can we accept the “legitimacy” of a president who blatantly lied about so many things to win? I won’t parse words, I know the dictionary definition of legitimate but also know that there are secondary meanings that are in common usage:

1.

a. Being in compliancewiththelaw;lawful:a legitimatebusiness.

b. Being in accordancewithestablished or acceptedrulesandstandards:legitimateadvertisingpractices.

c. Valid or justifiable:a legitimatecomplaint.

d. Based on logicalreasoning:a legitimatededuction.

2. Born of legallymarriedparents:legitimateoffspring.

3. Of,relatingto, or ruling by hereditaryright:a legitimatemonarch.

4. Of or relating to drama of highprofessionalqualitythatexcludesburlesque,vaudeville,andsomeforms of musicalcomedy:thelegitimatetheater.

Yes. He is the lawfully elected president. In that respect he is the legitimate president. The fact that he won enough Electoral College votes doesn’t matter to me, because so many of those votes came from people who believed his lies.

​If indeed Obama was born in Kenya, he wouldn’t have been legitimate president. He would have been an illegitimate and a fraudulent president.

Trump is not my president. Not because I didn’t vote for him. Rather he’s not my president because enough of the people who made the difference between his winning and losing voted for him because they believed his lies.

Barring a miracle, the Electoral College is about to elect a charlatan as president.

Thank you, Rutherford B. Hayes: The Posse Comitatus Act and Why We Need It Now More Than Ever

Maryland National Guard Sixth Regiment fighting its way through Baltimore, Maryland, 20 July 1877

Ironically In 1876, Hayes was elected president in one of the most contentious elections in national history. He lost the popular vote to DemocratSamuel J. Tildenbut he won an intensely disputed electoral college vote after a Congressional commission awarded him twenty contested electoral votes. The result was theCompromise of 1877, in which the Democrats acquiesced to Hayes's election and Hayes ended all U.S. military involvement in Southern politics. (from Wikipedia)

I don’t feel about writing an long history article about this, but the mere fact that I had to look this up is sobering, to say the least, appalling to say a bit more, and chilling to really lay it out the way it is.

The question is whether or not Trump could federalize the national guard to do his will inside the country.

The answer is that only governors can activate the guard to enforce the law. I thought this was the fact but had to look it up:

The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385, original at 20 Stat. 152) signed on June 18, 1878 by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The purpose of the act – in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807 – is to limit the powers of the federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States. It was passed as an amendment to an army appropriation bill following the end of Reconstruction, and was subsequently updated in 1956 and 1981. en.wikipedia.org/…

In doing a little research I discovered that federal troop were actually employed during the Hayes administration in 1887, a year prior to the Posse Comitatus Act. They were used to put down the Great Railroad Strike.For history buffs there’s a lot of information about it here. Suffice to say, as the picture on the right shows, it wasn’t a pretty picture.

Those of us who were aware of the shootings at Kent State know what can happen when the forces of “law and order” feel they have the license to use deadly force. I will spare you the iconic Pulitzer Prize winning picture from May, 4, 1970. You can see it here. If you’re too young to remember this, it was the seminal domestic event that lead to student strikes across the United States. If you’re my age and were in college at the time, as a Kos reader, I expect you participated in them.

Not to be outdone the lesser tabloid trash-monger claims to have ultra-top secret national security information too.

I expect all of you know that Donald Trump and NationalEnquirerCEO David Pecker have been friends for years. ( nymag.com/… ).

This morning, once again I had to go through the check-out aisle of magazine Hell. Only now the election is over and the National Enquirer’s hero defeated their treasonous villain.

Yet what do I see next to the pre-election edition of the equally in the tank for Trump and anti-hillary Globe (left)?

Of course the usual heavy on red and yellow on black National Enquirer cover screaming another hateful message at me and my fellow mostly liberal Portland, Oregon shoppers.

The National Enquirer is telling hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of shoppers around the country that Hillary and Huma are going to jail for treason, influence peddling, and bribery.

Kind of given less prominence between that headline and the ones about the sex abuse cover-up, the secret hospitalization and truth about the gay affair, and Hillary being caught destroying Obama’s legacy is the absolutely incredible bombshell about Putin’s spy file.

If true, the CIA must love this.

Not the Washington Post, not the New York Times, not Newsweek, Time nor Mother Jones.

Not even from Wikileaks. The National Enquirer scopes all these investigative news organizations with one of the biggest scoops since the Rosenberg spy case.

I was already seething with anger as I was about to click publish when I thought I checked the National Enquirer online and, not to my surprise, found they are shamelessly gloating over predicting Trump would win (left).

So, readers, here’s my poll. My answer is “other” because I have opened it and used my iPhone to take pictures of the articles in case I

I did it so you wouldn’t have to.On the protests: The nightmare scenario is that Trump orders the National Guard (can he do that?) to stop the protests using non-lethal force --- that he would even have to add non-lethal force is incredible thought.... but of course this could lead to lethal force from both sides.. Kent State?Would soldiers who are after, all citizens too, actually using any kind of force against non-violent protests?Warning signs will come when we learn of his appointments.... that a sherrif -- however unhinged as David Clarke -- is being mentioned to head Homeland Security is appalling. That a mere county sheriff, even from a big city like Milwaukie, without the credibility of even a big city police commissioner like William Bratton (NYC) would even be mentioned to head up Homeland Security is strange, but this man is dangerous. Read this….
Trump’s Dr. Jekyll could stop Mr. Hyde from Tweeting this morning:

Sat., Nov. 12, 2016

A pretty photo with a grim reminder.

The author of this NY Review of Books article , Masha Gessen, was interviewed by Rachel Maddow. We, as a group, should understand that there is a human tendency among most (not all) people to be optimistic. This applies to how some pundits, and people we talk to, are trying to normalize Trump. How cn we expect a man whose campaign showed him to be anything but normal turn around and become a normal president? We must be pragmatic, and neither succumb to optimism nor pessimism because of our own psychological make-up. We must be realistic, weigh the evidence pragmatically, and if that leads us to be pessimistic, so be it. From the article:

More dangerously, Clinton’s and Obama’s very civil passages, which ended in applause lines, seemed to close off alternative responses to his minority victory. (It was hard not to be reminded of Neville Chamberlain’s statement, that “We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will.”) Both Clinton’s and Obama’s phrases about the peaceful transfer of power concealed the omission of a call to action. The protesters who took to the streets of New York, Los Angeles, and other American cities on Wednesday night did so not because of Clinton’s speech but in spite of it. One of the falsehoods in the Clinton speech was the implied equivalency between civil resistance and insurgency. This is an autocrat’s favorite con, the explanation for the violent suppression of peaceful protests the world over

The second falsehood is the pretense that America is starting from scratch and its president-elect is a tabula rasa. Or we are: “we owe him an open mind.” It was as though Donald Trump had not, in the course of his campaign, promised to deport US citizens, promised to create a system of surveillance targeted specifically at Muslim Americans, promised to build a wall on the border with Mexico, advocated war crimes, endorsed torture, and repeatedly threatened to jail Hillary Clinton herself. It was as though those statements and many more could be written off as so much campaign hyperbole and now that the campaign was over, Trump would be eager to become a regular, rule-abiding politician of the pre-Trump era.

But Trump is anything but a regular politician and this has been anything but a regular election. Trump will be only the fourth candidate in history and the second in more than a century to win the presidency after losing the popular vote. He is also probably the first candidate in history to win the presidency despite having been shown repeatedly by the national media to be a chronic liar, sexual predator, serial tax-avoider, and race-baiter who has attracted the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. Most important, Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocrat—and won.

For political nitty gritted political junkies, let me add this article. My subheading is that the Trump Executive Branch machinations, with the personality clashes and conflicts we read about, won’t be any different than how it was in his campaign. Here’s proof.

The bitter infighting that plagued Donald Trump’s campaign during the Republican presidential primary is starting to spill over into his team’s efforts to establish an administration and political operation, according to more than half a dozen sources familiar with the planning efforts.

Those rifts and others are complicating what was an already a herculean task for Trump’s team: building a massive new government for a man who has never held public office.

“It's the same situation as in the primary – everyone has theknives out for each other,” said a Republican operative who worked with the campaign and is now advising people on the transition team.Read article

Read article. If you see me I will have lots of extra safety pins to hand out. I got to Freddy’s at 7 and bought the last pack of 50.

The Safety Pin Promise

The Promise

If you wear a hijab, I’ll sit with you on the train.

If you’re trans, I’ll go to the bathroom with you.

If you’re a person of color, I’ll stand with you if the cops stop you and/or whenever you need me.

If you’re a person with disabilities, I’ll hand you my megaphone.

If you’re LGBTQ, I won’t let anybody tell you you’re broken.

If you’re a woman, I’ll fight by your side for all your rights.

If you’re an immigrant, I’ll help you find resources.

If you’re a survivor, I’ll believe you.

If you’re a Native American, I’ll stand with you to protect our water, your burial grounds, and your people.

If you’re a refugee, I’ll make sure you’re welcome.

If you’re a union member, fighting for one, or fighting for $15/hour, I’ll be there.

If you’re a veteran, a college student, a member of the working or middle class, I’ll fight against austerity measures and for more publically funded assistance for all.

If you’re sick or just human, I’ll take up the fight for universal healthcare.

If you’re tired, me too.

If you need a hug, I’ve got an infinite supply.

If you need me, I’ll be with you. All I ask is that you be with me too.

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What do I think about and what I do I think about it?

May, 1, 2016

I migrated everything from April to the basement file cabinet, so fitting of Spring, this blog starts anew, unfortunately, again it’s Trump on my mind. The archives for the two months I have been sharing cyberspace with billions of bloggers are below.

If you are a new reader, welcome. I do this blog alone, but always welcome critiques and ideas from you, I mean you, whoever is actually reading these words.